Technology Driving HR Transformation

Natural- language processing may not yet offer seamless unstructured voice conversations, but many organizations already leverage chat as a communication channel to answer most questions. Technology is constantly learning from past interactions to humanize these interactions as much as possible. Recently, Volvo’s screening interview using AI generated more buzz during Brussels auto show than the displayed fancy vehicles there!

Leveraging Big Data

Big Data is a relatively new term that has been circulating in the HR space in the recent years. In essence, the amount of data that is available to HR professionals is exponentially increasing every year. This wealth of data creates huge opportunity for HR to analyze these data and use it to boost business performance. One way HR can leverage Big Data is to understand their existing customers and reach out and communicate to prospective customers. With the advantage of artificial intelligence and big data, HR managers can gain a deep insight on the organization, thus, aiding in critical decision making. Analysis of Big Data can also help to identify insights and emerging trends in the current workforce and help to create data driven decisions around recruitment, compensation and benefits, talent management, employee development and succession planning. Organizations like IBM has started to use insights gathered from employees to overhaul its performance review system. Another Australian based computer vision tech company, Seeing Machines, developed a solution that tracks driver’s eyes in order to detect fatigue to improve workplace safety.

Having said that, tapping into Big Data comes with a host of its own challenges as well. When navigating the new world of big data, it requires the ability to seek, extract and analyze relevant data that can in turn help generate insight to support business decisions. It is also crucial that we ensure the data that we seek are in compliance with local and international PDPA laws.

Focus on employee experience

Operational effectiveness is a critical part of employee satisfaction with HR. But whether it’s understanding the consumer journey in marketing or understanding user needs to drive digital user experience, HR has a great deal to catch up on this front when compared to other business functions. This is going to be a big challenge as the fundamental premise of HR policies was about providing consistent or equal employment experience. While the principle remains same, the execution has changed and it’s more about providing customized employee experience. For example, the employee benefits have become more flexible with employee having a greater say in what he/she wants and values. This cannot be delivered unless the employee experience is fully mapped and relevant digital tools are implemented across the journey to achieve a higher NPS (net promoter score) from employees. The focus on employee experience and NPS opens up a big space for digital intervention in HR. In order for this to materialize, HR needs to be equipped with customer-centric mindset and be prepared to ‘unlearn’ what they have learnt about traditional HR management. HR needs to design experiences that will help employees simplify their work lives which in turn increases engagement at work. It is done by developing a deep empathy towards employees, generating ideas and prototyping different solutions to address their needs eventually creating solutions that are user-friendly, engaging, desirable and easy to use.

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